Holly Blue, Meadow Brown

FADED Meadow Browns are as tattered as the tall dry grasses along the waysides. One feeds on our Marjoram, which is humming with bees.

A more unusual visitor is a fresh-looking Holly Blue, a male. Each sky blue wing is no bigger than a finger-nail. The underwing has dark spots on a pale background. There are none of the orange markings you'd see on other blues.

After a hot sticky day, the sparse cumulus mushrooms into over-balancing towers within just half an hour in the late afternoon and a storm rolls in from the west. At first I confuse the thunder with a simultaneous roll of drums on the stereo. Huge drops start to fall within minutes and, in the next two hours, we have more rain than I remember in the whole of July. House alarms trill like cicadas. The thunder rolls and rolls, sometimes sounding like a jet fighter roaring low overhead.

There is a delicious coolness afterwards. A frog hops across the patio, while a mistiness rises over the meadow.